Monterey County could lose water right permit for Salinas River

A 55-year-old Salinas River water right permit dating back to Monterey County's earliest efforts to halt seawater intrusion hangs in the balance, potentially complicating future progress on the problem.

After years of delay, and several time extensions, the state Water Resources Control Board is poised to hold a public hearing to consider revoking the permit issued in 1957, which allows the county to divert up to 168,000 acre-feet per year from the river for projects designed to help fight the advance of ocean water inland.

Just before Thanksgiving, the state water board issued a notice that it intended to hold the public hearing in Sacramento at the end of January, more than three years after it issued a notice of proposed revocation and five years after it had rejected the county's latest attempt to ask for another time extension.

Since then, the county has asked for, and received, a continuance of the hearing, and county and state officials are working to reschedule the hearing for some time in the next few months.

County Water Resources Agency general manager David Chardavoyne said the staff is still in the process of preparing an analysis of the issue for the agency board and the Board of Supervisors, including a possible strategy for using the water right allowed under the permit. He added public stakeholders will also be invited to weigh in on any such plan.

Chardavoyne said he believes it makes sense for the county to argue it still needs the water right permit to continue the fight against seawater intrusion.

"When you have a water right such as this, you should work to retain it because it's a valuable benefit to Monterey County," Chardavoyne said. "Ultimately, it's up to the board to decide."

State water board spokesman Tim Moran pointed out that the issue has been pending before the board for some time, and has finally made it to the public hearing phase.

A state water board staff prosecution team will allege the permit should be revoked for "failure to commence, prosecute with due diligence, and complete the work necessary to appropriate water or apply the water to beneficial use" as required by the permit. The county will be allowed to present its argument. A state water board staff hearing team will conduct the proceeding, and state water board members may also be present.

The county's compliance with the terms of the permit has been an issue for decades.

When the permit was originally issued in 1957, the county had planned to construct the Castroville and Eastside canals for use in diverting river water for municipal consumption, allowing the county to develop a new water source and stop pumping from coastal wells as part of the seawater intrusion effort.

Under the original permit, the projects were supposed to be finished by 1962 and water made available within five years. However, those projects were delayed for decades and the county asked for, and was granted, a series of time extensions over the years — most recently in 1982. The county initially applied for a sixth extension in 1986, amended it nearly a decade later, then withdrew and resubmitted a new application in 2008. However, the state water board staff ruled the most recent application was invalid because it was improperly filled out and a fee was not paid, leaving the original amended deadlines requiring completion of the project in the 1980s in place.

Johnson said the county has been focused on other major projects, such as the Castroville Seawater Intrusion Project and the Salinas Valley Water Project — under separate permits, "as part of the overall seawater intrusion strategy" to deal with a problem the original permit was intended to address.

While the county has repeatedly missed deadlines and still hasn't used any of its allocation of river water under the original permit, Johnson said the county's future efforts against seawater intrusion would be "complicated" by the loss of the permit. For instance, he said a second phase of the Salinas Valley Water Project — or rubber dam — would propose to use the river water allocation under the original permit to further offset overdrafting of the Salinas Valley groundwater basin.

According to the agency's own studies, the rate of seawater intrusion in the Salinas Valley has slowed in recent years, though it continues to advance inland, and groundwater levels have risen. However, an agency senior hydrologist recently declined to make a definitive link between the most recent data and the agency's water projects, and refused to opine that the data indicated seawater intrusion would eventually stop or the recovery of groundwater levels was a long-term trend.